What are real stats and search stats?

One misunderstood fact about Scratch is that, for any project, Scratch uses two types of statistics. First, there are the real stats. These are the stats (views, loves, favorites...) that you see when you click on a project. Scratch updates them every time someone views, loves, favorites... a project, so they are very accurate. The second type of statistics linked to any project is the Search stats. As the name suggests, these stats are the only stats being used to order projects on Search and Explore. In other words, these stats determine where your project will be placed on Search and Explore. The Search stats are not updated every time someone views a project, but instead need to frequently be updated to the real stats by Scratch's servers to stay as accurate as possible to the real stats, else the Search stats will be way lower.


The problem is Scratch is often not reliable at uptating the Search stats of projects, so these stats often stay extremely low for months no matter what the real stats are, which affects where projects appear on Search and Explore. So, for example, a project could have 100 000 real views, but be stuck at 1 Search views which means that the project will be at the bottom of the results even though the project has thousands of real views. This example project will only show up at the appropriate place on Search and Explore when Scratch's servers will update the Search stats to the real ones for this particular project, which can take months.


So, by showing both the real stats and the Search stats of any project and also whether or not a project is indexed, ScratchViews allows you to understand where and why any project shows up on Search and Explore.

What does "indexed" means for a project?

When a project is shared on Scratch, it won't immediately show up on Search when you search for it. But why?


This is because it needs to be indexed first. So, when a project is shared, Scratch's indexer notices that it has just been shared and indexes it, which means that the information related to that project (title, description, views, loves...) gets sent to the Search database. Once that's done the project will show up on Search. But keep in mind that the information that was sent to the Search database won't change until the project is reindexed by Scratch.


So, for example, if you change the title of a project that was already indexed (visible on Search), the project won't immediately show up when searching for the new title, because the information has not been updated in the search database yet. The reindexing process can take up to a few months and until then, the project will stay at the same position on Search, because the Search stats for this project won't be changed in the Search database. Keep in mind that the code that controls the indexing process is not public, so it is near impossible to understand exacly how it works.

How is the Best Projects list created?

On may 3th a new section was added to the ScratchViews user profiles! It is the Best projects list. This section's main goal is to show the user's projects that are the most appreciated by the Scratch community, no matter how much views they have. So the Most Viewed Projects and the Best Projects lists should differ.


The Best Projects list is created with an algorithm that gives a score to each of the user's projects and then orders them based on the scores. The score is meant to reprensent how appreciated the project is by the scratch community and is based mosty on the favorites/loves ratio which gives a good idea of the project quality and is also based on the number of favorites the projects have (the number of favorites mostly has an impact for less popular projects). Keep in mind that the method used the create the Best Projects is subjective, but it should give a pretty accurate representation of the user's best projects.

What is the ScratchViews Explore page?

It is important to know key differences between the Scratch Explore page and the ScratchViews explore page. Although they both use an algorithm to add projects to themselves, ScratchViews' algorithm is way more selective and only allow projects which meet a high quality standard. This means that the projects that will appear on ScratchViews' explore page will be more elaborate, polished and safe, but this also means that the ScratchViews Explore page will add less projects compared to the regular Scratch Explore page. On average, there should be a few new projects added to ScratchViews' project collection every week.


Also, the ScratchViews Explore page does not have a "trending" page and the default page is the Recent one which shows the latest projects that are in ScratchViews' collection. This means that the main criteria for a project to appear on the ScratchViews explore page is not the stats, but rather its quality and how appreciated it is by the community. This also means that all scratchers can go on the explore page as long as their projects are at the same quality level as the rest of the projects on ScratchViews' explore page. Other than the Recent page, on ScratchViews you'll also see the option to filter projects by popularity (order based on views) and by ratings (use a similar formula than the Best projects section discussed just above).


If you want one of your projects on the ScratchViews Explore page, I recommend working hard on a project and, if it is very appreciated by the community, it might have a chance to be picked up by ScratchViews algorithm and than added to the ScratchViews Explore page! There might also be a studio in the future where it will be possible to submit projects to be added to the ScratchViews explore page.